You want Tually support it wont come cheap mostly because Tually was at the end of the 370 lifecycle so there wasn't a huge amount of boards made to support it nor was there a lot support added to existing boards. Add in the capacitor plague and you will find that Tually boards that are still functioning will be more expensive than non tually boards.

Right now the market is also expensive as hell so nothing collectable is cheap right now, so either you grab what you can that works at a reasonable price or you buy what you want at a more expensive price.

Alternatively you could just wait till it appears at a price you want.

brian105 wrote on 2022-03-22, 06:47:

Slight hyperbole, but I've looked through eBay for Socket 370 motherboards for a while now and the only Tualatin compatible ones are at least $80. And that's including the poor chipsets like the 815 B -step and 820, which are apparently pretty slow for 370. Does anybody know if a model which doesn't break the bank exists? I'd like AGP 4x (2x is ok I guess) and of course Tualatin support. DDR would be a dream but that's not happening with these prices.

(yes, I'm aware of this list https://www.vogonswiki.com/index.php/List_of_ … 70_motherboards )

820 (especially) and 840 chipsets are turds when used with SDRAM, but apparently better with RDRAM (840 supports dual channel), IMHO .
The 815 family is limited to 512MB SDRAM and is a bit slower than the 440BX at the same clock speed, but not catastrophically so, IMHO .

Do you want/need ISA slots ? That can be a variable to consider .

See this for an example of a DDR socket 370 board .Re: Socket 370 mobo recommendation required - for a 1.4 GHz Tualatin , but that is not cheap and probably not really worth it either even if it was to be found cheap .

Other than boards with official Tualatin, there are multiple boards that are Coppermine capable but can be made to work with a Tualatin with an interposer (might need a BIOS mode too) as long as the VRM on the motherboard is able to provide the lower voltage the Tualatin needs . There is a guy based in South Korea that sells Tualatin CPUs with such an interposer (he also has a motherboard compatibility list) on the auction site that shall not be named but rimes with ashtray . 😉

EDIT : For reference I bought my Ipox 3ETI23 in 2017 for 70 Euros (including shipping from Spain to Canada ) . It is 815EP based , has AGP 4x and 3 ISA slots in addition to native Tualatin support, so 80 $US (presumably) does not seem out of this world to me .

darry wrote on 2022-03-22, 07:08:

820 (especially) and 840 chipsets are turds when used with SDRAM, but apparently better with RDRAM (840 supports dual channel), […]
Show full quote

brian105 wrote on 2022-03-22, 06:47:

Slight hyperbole, but I've looked through eBay for Socket 370 motherboards for a while now and the only Tualatin compatible ones are at least $80. And that's including the poor chipsets like the 815 B -step and 820, which are apparently pretty slow for 370. Does anybody know if a model which doesn't break the bank exists? I'd like AGP 4x (2x is ok I guess) and of course Tualatin support. DDR would be a dream but that's not happening with these prices.

(yes, I'm aware of this list https://www.vogonswiki.com/index.php/List_of_ … 70_motherboards )

820 (especially) and 840 chipsets are turds when used with SDRAM, but apparently better with RDRAM (840 supports dual channel), IMHO .
The 815 family is limited to 512MB SDRAM and is a bit slower than the 440BX at the same clock speed, but not catastrophically so, IMHO .

Do you want/need ISA slots ? That can be a variable to consider .

See this for an example of a DDR socket 370 board .Re: Socket 370 mobo recommendation required - for a 1.4 GHz Tualatin , but that is not cheap and probably not really worth it either even if it was to be found cheap .

Other than boards with official Tualatin, there are multiple boards that are Coppermine capable but can be made to work with a Tualatin with an interposer (might need a BIOS mode too) as long as the VRM on the motherboard is able to provide the lower voltage the Tualatin needs . There is a guy based in South Korea that sells Tualatin CPUs with such an interposer (he also has a motherboard compatibility list) on the auction site that shall not be named but rimes with ashtray . 😉

I don't need ISA on the boards, but you speaking of RDRAM actually made me think of Socket 423. I think the 2.0ghz P4 performs similarly to the 1.4ghz Tualatin, so it may actually be an option considering that the boards much cheaper? CPUs also seem much cheaper (cheapest 1.4 Tually is $70 on eBay)

brian105 wrote on 2022-03-22, 07:14:

darry wrote on 2022-03-22, 07:08:

820 (especially) and 840 chipsets are turds when used with SDRAM, but apparently better with RDRAM (840 supports dual channel), […]
Show full quote

brian105 wrote on 2022-03-22, 06:47:

Slight hyperbole, but I've looked through eBay for Socket 370 motherboards for a while now and the only Tualatin compatible ones are at least $80. And that's including the poor chipsets like the 815 B -step and 820, which are apparently pretty slow for 370. Does anybody know if a model which doesn't break the bank exists? I'd like AGP 4x (2x is ok I guess) and of course Tualatin support. DDR would be a dream but that's not happening with these prices.

(yes, I'm aware of this list https://www.vogonswiki.com/index.php/List_of_ … 70_motherboards )

820 (especially) and 840 chipsets are turds when used with SDRAM, but apparently better with RDRAM (840 supports dual channel), IMHO .
The 815 family is limited to 512MB SDRAM and is a bit slower than the 440BX at the same clock speed, but not catastrophically so, IMHO .

Do you want/need ISA slots ? That can be a variable to consider .

See this for an example of a DDR socket 370 board .Re: Socket 370 mobo recommendation required - for a 1.4 GHz Tualatin , but that is not cheap and probably not really worth it either even if it was to be found cheap .

Other than boards with official Tualatin, there are multiple boards that are Coppermine capable but can be made to work with a Tualatin with an interposer (might need a BIOS mode too) as long as the VRM on the motherboard is able to provide the lower voltage the Tualatin needs . There is a guy based in South Korea that sells Tualatin CPUs with such an interposer (he also has a motherboard compatibility list) on the auction site that shall not be named but rimes with ashtray . 😉

I don't need ISA on the boards, but you speaking of RDRAM actually made me think of Socket 423. I think the 2.0ghz P4 performs similarly to the 1.4ghz Tualatin, so it may actually be an option considering that the boards much cheaper? CPUs also seem much cheaper (cheapest 1.4 Tually is $70 on eBay)

IMHO, if you don't need ISA slots or compatibility with AGP (3.3V) Voodoo 3 cards, I don't see the point in seeking out a Tualatin . A fast Pentium 4 (no need to limit oneself to 2.0GHz if this is for Windows use only), is probably a much cheaper choice as long as you get one that doesn't double as a space heater (Pentium 4 chips run hot in general and some of them unacceptably so, IMHO, even by the standards of the time when they were current) .

brian105 wrote on 2022-03-22, 07:14:

darry wrote on 2022-03-22, 07:08:

820 (especially) and 840 chipsets are turds when used with SDRAM, but apparently better with RDRAM (840 supports dual channel), […]
Show full quote

brian105 wrote on 2022-03-22, 06:47:

Slight hyperbole, but I've looked through eBay for Socket 370 motherboards for a while now and the only Tualatin compatible ones are at least $80. And that's including the poor chipsets like the 815 B -step and 820, which are apparently pretty slow for 370. Does anybody know if a model which doesn't break the bank exists? I'd like AGP 4x (2x is ok I guess) and of course Tualatin support. DDR would be a dream but that's not happening with these prices.

(yes, I'm aware of this list https://www.vogonswiki.com/index.php/List_of_ … 70_motherboards )

820 (especially) and 840 chipsets are turds when used with SDRAM, but apparently better with RDRAM (840 supports dual channel), IMHO .
The 815 family is limited to 512MB SDRAM and is a bit slower than the 440BX at the same clock speed, but not catastrophically so, IMHO .

Do you want/need ISA slots ? That can be a variable to consider .

See this for an example of a DDR socket 370 board .Re: Socket 370 mobo recommendation required - for a 1.4 GHz Tualatin , but that is not cheap and probably not really worth it either even if it was to be found cheap .

Other than boards with official Tualatin, there are multiple boards that are Coppermine capable but can be made to work with a Tualatin with an interposer (might need a BIOS mode too) as long as the VRM on the motherboard is able to provide the lower voltage the Tualatin needs . There is a guy based in South Korea that sells Tualatin CPUs with such an interposer (he also has a motherboard compatibility list) on the auction site that shall not be named but rimes with ashtray . 😉

I don't need ISA on the boards, but you speaking of RDRAM actually made me think of Socket 423. I think the 2.0ghz P4 performs similarly to the 1.4ghz Tualatin, so it may actually be an option considering that the boards much cheaper? CPUs also seem much cheaper (cheapest 1.4 Tually is $70 on eBay)

The Tually with DDR runs rings around Willamette with Rdram, the Willamette Rdram variants were total dogs for performance once they got DDR they did better.

Onyl reason to build a Rdram setup is for shits and giggles or because you have Rdram laying around.

darry wrote on 2022-03-22, 07:22:

brian105 wrote on 2022-03-22, 07:14:

darry wrote on 2022-03-22, 07:08:

820 (especially) and 840 chipsets are turds when used with SDRAM, but apparently better with RDRAM (840 supports dual channel), […]
Show full quote

820 (especially) and 840 chipsets are turds when used with SDRAM, but apparently better with RDRAM (840 supports dual channel), IMHO .
The 815 family is limited to 512MB SDRAM and is a bit slower than the 440BX at the same clock speed, but not catastrophically so, IMHO .

Do you want/need ISA slots ? That can be a variable to consider .

See this for an example of a DDR socket 370 board .Re: Socket 370 mobo recommendation required - for a 1.4 GHz Tualatin , but that is not cheap and probably not really worth it either even if it was to be found cheap .

Other than boards with official Tualatin, there are multiple boards that are Coppermine capable but can be made to work with a Tualatin with an interposer (might need a BIOS mode too) as long as the VRM on the motherboard is able to provide the lower voltage the Tualatin needs . There is a guy based in South Korea that sells Tualatin CPUs with such an interposer (he also has a motherboard compatibility list) on the auction site that shall not be named but rimes with ashtray . 😉

I don't need ISA on the boards, but you speaking of RDRAM actually made me think of Socket 423. I think the 2.0ghz P4 performs similarly to the 1.4ghz Tualatin, so it may actually be an option considering that the boards much cheaper? CPUs also seem much cheaper (cheapest 1.4 Tually is $70 on eBay)

IMHO, if you don't need ISA slots or compatibility with AGP (3.3V) Voodoo 3 cards, I don't see the point in seeking out a Tualatin . A fast Pentium 4 (no need to limit oneself to 2.0GHz if this is for Windows use only), is probably a much cheaper choice as long as you get one that doesn't double as a space heater (Pentium 4 chips run hot in general and some of them unacceptably so, IMHO, even by the standards of the time when they were current) .

Makes sense to get a Socket 478 system then, since they still work on Windows 98 pretty well. Thanks for the advice.

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-03-22, 07:22:

brian105 wrote on 2022-03-22, 07:14:

darry wrote on 2022-03-22, 07:08:

820 (especially) and 840 chipsets are turds when used with SDRAM, but apparently better with RDRAM (840 supports dual channel), […]
Show full quote

820 (especially) and 840 chipsets are turds when used with SDRAM, but apparently better with RDRAM (840 supports dual channel), IMHO .
The 815 family is limited to 512MB SDRAM and is a bit slower than the 440BX at the same clock speed, but not catastrophically so, IMHO .

Do you want/need ISA slots ? That can be a variable to consider .

See this for an example of a DDR socket 370 board .Re: Socket 370 mobo recommendation required - for a 1.4 GHz Tualatin , but that is not cheap and probably not really worth it either even if it was to be found cheap .

Other than boards with official Tualatin, there are multiple boards that are Coppermine capable but can be made to work with a Tualatin with an interposer (might need a BIOS mode too) as long as the VRM on the motherboard is able to provide the lower voltage the Tualatin needs . There is a guy based in South Korea that sells Tualatin CPUs with such an interposer (he also has a motherboard compatibility list) on the auction site that shall not be named but rimes with ashtray . 😉

I don't need ISA on the boards, but you speaking of RDRAM actually made me think of Socket 423. I think the 2.0ghz P4 performs similarly to the 1.4ghz Tualatin, so it may actually be an option considering that the boards much cheaper? CPUs also seem much cheaper (cheapest 1.4 Tually is $70 on eBay)

The Tually with DDR runs rings around Willamette with Rdram, the Willamette Rdram variants were total dogs for performance once they got DDR they did better.

Onyl reason to build a Rdram setup is for shits and giggles or because you have Rdram laying around.

I was thinking more along the the lines of an 845 chipset at minimum or even an 865 or 875 chipset based board with dual channel DDR and a Northwood Pentium 4 . The only potential difficulty is getting one with good capacitors (or replacing bad ones) as that is straight from the crappy capacitor era .

There are some cheaper ones but not for gaming.

I ordered 5 x Tyan Thunder S2518 LE-T boards back in Sept 2019 with 1 x 1.266 Ghz CPU and heatsink per board for $20 shipped and they all worked. Some of the heatsinks had noisy fans but they were all copper heatsinks. Serverworks chipset so not for overclocking.

I snagged them for an old Win2k server project and not for gaming (figured the spares would be nice).

darry wrote on 2022-03-22, 07:27:

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-03-22, 07:22:

brian105 wrote on 2022-03-22, 07:14:

I don't need ISA on the boards, but you speaking of RDRAM actually made me think of Socket 423. I think the 2.0ghz P4 performs similarly to the 1.4ghz Tualatin, so it may actually be an option considering that the boards much cheaper? CPUs also seem much cheaper (cheapest 1.4 Tually is $70 on eBay)

The Tually with DDR runs rings around Willamette with Rdram, the Willamette Rdram variants were total dogs for performance once they got DDR they did better.

Onyl reason to build a Rdram setup is for shits and giggles or because you have Rdram laying around.

I was thinking more along the the lines of an 845 chipset at minimum or even an 865 or 875 chipset based board with dual channel DDR and a Northwood Pentium 4 . The only potential difficulty is getting one with good capacitors (or replacing bad ones) as that is straight from the crappy capacitor era .

Yup stick with DDR its faster and the boards will likely be much cheaper than Rdram variants .. you could go with Presshot too if you really want to see how hot the P4 can get 😁 but Northwood is cool too.

RDRam has received quite a bad reputation, which has more to do with the maffia marketing techniques used by the parent company holding the licencing rights and Intel pushing ut at whatever cost.

Coupled with a P4, it is still a viable platform and a couple of my Win98SE systems are based around RDRam with great performance and compatibility. In hindsight, it was not the best choice at the time, but that goes for other platforms as well.

Back on topic, all things Tualatin (boards, interposers, cpu's) have become too expensive, especially since s478 P4 systems are still affordable and can offer better performance at a lower cost. It's the inevitable evolution of all platforms. S478 and its contemporary platforms will soon become expensive too, as they are at the Win98SE cut-off point. Any non-tpm compliant platform will become one day a retro win10 gaming system too.

Tl;dr:

Get a S478 platform for pure Win98SE gaming, S370 is quickly becoming too collectible to afford whilst offering less performance.

Couple of things to consider re pricing, applicable both to So370 and P4:

- at any given time prices on eBay will always look bad. Why? Because good deals are snapped up quickly while bad deals remain. The prices you see are the prices nobody (yet) wanted to pay.
- to get the good deals you need to watch the platform like a hawk, get in there before others do. That costs time but saves money.
- the better the description, the higher the price. If you search for "Socket 370 Tualatin" you'll find nice boards, but the fact someone has gone to the trouble of working that out and making a good advert added value, and so cost. Same for specific desirable boards (i.e. "Asus TU4VX")
- you get much better deals with the "old motherboard" or "lot of old electronics" stuff. Of course that means you need to add the time and knowledge yourself.

Of course, even then you're not going to get absolute pearls for the price of muck, but chances are good of getting stuff for half the price of what your first search of eBay shows.

As for P4 vs P3 - question is what you want. If you're barely interested in the hardware other than as a means to run the software, go for the cheaper, easier options, which means P4. In fact, don't go for So423, but aim for So478, as it's commoner and the Northwood P4 runs slightly cooler, which helps prevent motherboard VRMs from dying on you. Additionally P4 systems draw power from PSUs basically the same way modern ones do, so you can use a modern PSU efficiently. P3 systems draw less from 12V and more from 5V, which means you need a higher-spec modern PSU than pure wattage would suggest and depending on design it may operate less efficiently too.

Another option would be Socket A, but I've heard many of those boards don't have a 4-pin CPU connector. If I manage to find one with the 4-pin connector, is it worth getting over the 478 options? Or are the Athlons and P4's similar enough in performance that it wouldn't make sense to look for those Socket A options?

brian105 wrote on 2022-03-22, 08:29:

Another option would be Socket A, but I've heard many of those boards don't have a 4-pin CPU connector. If I manage to find one with the 4-pin connector, is it worth getting over the 478 options? Or are the Athlons and P4's similar enough in performance that it wouldn't make sense to look for those Socket A options?

Back in the day, the lower price and better performance where it mattered, meant that SoA was generally a much better choice than So423/478.

Now however I'd reconsider:
- SoA Athlon cores were notoriously vulnerable to crunching, a lot will be dead, or will die in shipping if seller leaves heatsink on (they do...).
- SoA didn't have thermal throttling, much higher chance of overheated CPU.
- SoA CPUs needed BIG heatsinks but basically still had the same clip system in use since So5. Broken clips on socket were and are common.
- early to mid SoA boards drew CPU power from 5V, which was a much bigger problem than with P3; a fully kitted-out Athlon 1400 system could require >30A on the 5V line.
- capacitor plague was an issue with all turn-of-the-millennium boards, but SoA seemed more affected than So4xx, probably due to requirement to be cheaper.
- in the day, a similar-performing P4 easily cost twice the price of an Athlon. Now there is no significant price sifference.

Again, this is a hardware vs software thing. If you built your own system(s) in the early 00's and were not flush with money, chances are you would have bought a SoA system. If you're nostalgic for that hardware, SoA is the way to go. But if you don't care about the hardware or specifically want it to be trouble-free, just letting you run Win98SE as fast as possible, I'd say get a P4 - or if you're considering AMD, look at the early Athlon64 AGP systems.

Ah, yes... the ardent desire to have a Tualatin 1.4 GHz build. I know it all too well - been there, done that. 😁 In fact, I ended up building a bit too many.

Well, fast forward to today, I now have 4 x Tualatin 1.4 GHz builds (2 x TUSL2-C, 1 x Abit ST6, 1 x Gigabyte GA-6IEM) that I literally only used for a couple of days when I built them, and they've all been in storage for quite a few years now.

Why? Because it's a pretty boring platform (for me) with nothing special going for it. It's fast, but not the fastest, it offers no speed flexibility (with the L1 cache disabled it performs like an average 386), no ISA slots (at least not on the Intel chipset), it's very stable (but so are many other builds).

The cheapest option is BX slot1 board and modded socket adapter

rasz_pl wrote on 2022-03-22, 15:42:

The cheapest option is BX slot1 board and modded socket adapter

Cheapest is whatever you happen to find locally at a thrift shop...

BX boards are hardly cheap anymore either. My cheapest Tualatin-compatible board was a Compaq uATX board with b-stepping i815 chipset. Not advertised as Tualatin-compatible (or indeed as having that chipset), but stll was. EUR 15 two years back.

brian105 wrote on 2022-03-22, 07:25:

Makes sense to get a Socket 478 system then, since they still work on Windows 98 pretty well. Thanks for the advice.

I went through this process last year and found that a lot of the P4 socket 478 boards I looked at on eBay had bulging or leaky caps and the ones that were in good shape weren't less expensive than socket 370 Tualatin boards.

I ended up with a TUSL2-C in excellent shape for $70.

dionb wrote on 2022-03-22, 15:56:

rasz_pl wrote on 2022-03-22, 15:42:

The cheapest option is BX slot1 board and modded socket adapter

Cheapest is whatever you happen to find locally at a thrift shop...

BX boards are hardly cheap anymore either. My cheapest Tualatin-compatible board was a Compaq uATX board with b-stepping i815 chipset. Not advertised as Tualatin-compatible (or indeed as having that chipset), but stll was. EUR 15 two years back.

Yep, even on ebay alone, it hugely depends if you want "that very specific thing, now" or are willing to browse old systems or unspecified motherboard till you find the right thing.
But those adapters in general are very common and so are generic 440BX boards like the Asus P2B - I picked one up for 15 Euro in an auction some weeks ago.
If and how that'll work - maybe this will help:
Motherboard Asus P2B with coppermine or tualatin cpu?

Good hunting!

Edit: And please, stop inflating the price of the cusl2, I want one of those to have any period correct board for my GF256 with AGP pro, never mind the socket. But the cusl2 seems like the best choice.

I'm of the mind time is more valuable than money. You can always get more money; always. If you want the Tualatin, go buy it... if it's torture to wait around for the right bargain, don't do that to yourself. If you don't mind biding your time for the right deal, well then great; enjoy!

DDR support around this time period is no big deal, either. I have found unless you're playing games at 640x480 or to a lesser extent 800x600, you won't notice the difference as the GPU starts to pick up more of the slack around this time frame. Most of the reviews to stress this point are made at 640x480 (under ideal benchmark conditions to boot, which you aren't going to experience in games most of the time...) because most or all gains are lost as the load on the GPU increase. Are you playing at this resolution? If you're in a competition to get every last 1-2fps... OK, I cede my point.

What was once a noticeable gain going from a 66 or 100MHz bus to 133MHz is less so with DDR around this era. You're not using the PC for day-to-day functions or "Blender," either. Cheap Micron/Crucial CL2 PC133 RAM is a plenty. An overclockable 440BX motherboard to 133MHz is ideal. After that, jump to a late P4 or Athlon XP. If you have an interest in 3dfx, look for a universal AGP slot (for these later P4/Athlon XP boards.) You're not going to get gigantic performance boosts with AGP 4x either until you get over the Tualatin hump, also, unless most of the games you are playing consist of large textures. Then AGP 4x is going to help out.